What does the future hold? ~ Jeanette Bunn

 

 

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to glance into a crystal ball and see what the future holds? See what lies ahead of you so you can get ready for it and get the most out of it? Unfortunately, I don’t have a crystal ball but I can still tell you that changes are coming. Yes, some big and exciting changes are coming to the traveling world. Recent research from the travel industry is showing that personal interest in vacation clubs is growing again after a few slow years. This means that more people are starting to hit the road again, but the same research also shows a growing trend in the way people are traveling today. Many travelers are now looking for a shorter-term commitment, more often between two and four days instead of a full week. Some people also tend to be more spontaneous when it comes to making traveling plans, and they want to take advantage of last-minute deals for a quick getaway.

 

This means that travel agencies and traveling clubs like ours need to ensure we offer the flexibility that many travelers are now requesting. At Travel To Go, we’re constantly searching hard to add more options to our inventory when it comes to timeshare lengths of stay and options. Whether we add more online resources or not, we’ll always have real human beings who are there to guide you and assist you in your travel needs, combined with the convenient speed of internet services.

What have you done for me lately? ~ Tommy Middaugh

 

We all know the expression, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” It’s true that first impressions are extremely important, especially in the business world. If you give a new customer a poor experience the first time they shop with you, they probably won’t come back for more. And even worse, they won’t refer your business to their friends and may even share their bad experience instead. Every business knows to aim at making the best first impression with every potential customer. Does this mean you shouldn’t keep trying your best once you’ve made a new client’s first shopping experience a success? Absolutely not, your second, third and all future impressions are what really matter. If you want to maintain the new customer base you’ve worked so hard to acquire, you need to grow your business through referrals.

 

Customer loyalty is very important to all of us at Travel To Go and that’s why we’re always finding new ways to please our new and existing members. We not only deliver 5-Star Service at every customer’s point of contact, we also continue to expand our line of products and services that we acquire through affiliations and partnerships. Let’s be honest, our travel club members are not the only ones we strive to please. We take good care of our network of distributors so that we can create long-term, trusting partnerships with them. We provide them with the sales and marketing materials they need to represent our business to their own customers. Our latest communication tool, a newsletter, is another way we’ve found to keep in touch with our network. In this manner we continue to make a great impression.

 

So, what have we done for you lately? How did your latest vacation turn out? I encourage you to share your experience with us on our company’s Facebook page

Harvesting hidden talents ~ Troy Nunez

Just spend a few days in the Travel To Go office, and one thing you’ll notice right away is that we don’t pigeonhole our employees. That is because we don’t hire people to fill specific positions that we expect them to stay in for years to come. In fact, we’re all about developing talent and encouraging our people to learn and grow.

 

Many of our employees who now work as part of our sales and marketing teams started out as phone travel agents. Training is very important to us and we put our most experienced travel specialists in charge of training the newcomers. As for our current employees, we make sure they continue their learning curve by signing them up for cross-training. This is a great way for them to find out how other departments work, and if they’d like to move to that department in the future. Cross-training also gives our employees some insight at what other departments go through and how their department and work ethic can help or impair other employees and the company. Ensuring that our employees understand how all of the departments work together is a great way to make us all more productive and united.

 

And let’s always remember how important it is to think out of the box. We encourage every employee to do so and come up with great ideas or changes to improve our business processes. This “out of the box” mentality is what has helped our business grow more aggressively over the past year. We’re proud to have many employees with great ideas and we’re glad they feel empowered to share them with us every day.

Digging for gold ~ Troy Nunez

As a company with a continued growth plan, Travel To Go always seeks new gold pockets – additional revenue opportunities. Unfortunately, just like real gold in a mine, these opportunities are often hidden and not so obvious to discover. Gold mining can be time consuming and resource intensive, and it’s important to be as efficient as we can. So how do we locate these deep rich veins, and how do we mine them? That’s the job of our business development team, who is constantly uncovering new growth areas by relentlessly chipping away. Here are some examples of mining opportunities we have been focusing on:

 

·         We have been mining our travel club member database, by increasing our ways of communicating with our new and long-term members. We now offer more travel options than ever before and we want to make sure our members know about them all. For that we use the many communication tools we have available, including phone, email, social media and blogging.

·         We have been increasing our travel club membership base, with very aggressive target numbers for this year and beyond.

·         We have developed new product lines by offering more travel related services. We have also developed more customized client promotions, including air/car/cruise/hotel/timeshare/resort/theme park offerings. Our specialized teams help our clients simplify their travel booking process by making just one phone call for all their travel needs.

·         We have worked hard to have access to additional price discounts and pass on those savings to our members, giving them the opportunity to travel more often or longer for fewer dollars.

·         We’re continuing to improve our 5-Star Service to keep our newest and oldest members completely satisfied.

 

Why do we keep mining for gold? Because we love what we do and we enjoy getting testimonials from our members to keep us going. If you’d like to share your travel experience with us, post it on the Travel To Go Facebook page. We’re looking forward to hearing it!

 

Veterans Day thoughts ~ Tommy Middaugh

Veterans Day is a time for all of us to honor our brave military service members and veterans, and thank them for their dedicated service. America wouldn’t be the country it is today without their tremendous sacrifice and courage. I’m very grateful for what our service members have done and keep doing to protect us at home and abroad. Of course, there are many community and national ceremonies taking place on Veterans Day you can attend.  Here are a few other unique things you can do to honor our veterans and service members on November 11.

 

1) Send a thank-you or a holiday card to a service member

Did you know that you can send a Christmas card, Thanksgiving card, or a thank-you card to any wounded service member? Show them you care by addressing your cards to:

Any Recovering American Soldier

c/o Walter Reed Army Medical Center

6900 Georgia Avenue, NW

Washington, D.C. 20307-5001

 

2) Donate a gift card to a military family or a calling card to an active service member

The AAFES website (https://shop.aafes.com/scs/default.aspx) lists a number of organizations that support our military and help you donate these welcome gifts.

 

3) Thank a military spouse or family on Veterans Day

Military spouses and children are often the unsung heroes while service members are being deployed and putting their lives at risk. Personally thank a local family for their sacrifices with a thank-you card, some cookies, a pie or a whole homemade meal, or even a gift card to a restaurant in town.

 

4) Support a veterans organization like The Wounded Warrior Project

The Wounded Warrior Project (http://www.woundedwarriorproject.org) is very close to my heart and one of the many non-profit organizations that Travel To Go supports every year. The organization’s mission is to raise awareness and enlist the public's aid for the needs of injured service members, as well as to help injured service members aid and assist each other. You can support The Wounded Warrior Project in many ways, including financially or with your time.

 

Can you think of other ways to support our veterans and service members?

 

Never say never ~ Jeanette Bunn

A wise person once said, “Every day may not be good, but there's something good in every day.” Did you know that your thoughts tend to reflect your attitude toward yourself and others, and can even affect your health and well-being? Do you see the glass half-empty or half-full? How about taking the opportunity during this month when we celebrate what we’re thankful for to increase your positive thinking? Here are a few tips that work for me that I’d like to share with you.

 

Practice positive talk to yourself and others. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? But how many times have you found yourself saying, “I can’t…”, “why does this happen to me?”, “what if I fail?” Here are some examples of how to turn negative thoughts into positive ones.

Negative thought                                         Positive thought

This is such a problem                                This is an opportunity to learn

I can’t do that                                                I will do my best

I’m not sure I can                                         I’ll see what I can do

I’m overwhelmed                                          I’m quite busy

I can’t lose weight                                        I can eat healthier

I have no time to exercise                           I will make time to exercise

 

Surround yourself with positive people. Sometimes we don’t notice those around us who seem to walk under a dark cloud and try to drag us underneath. Remember, misery loves company! Negative people can increase your stress levels and make you doubt yourself. Surround yourself with people who are supportive, willing to offer advice and help anytime you ask.

 

Take time to find humor and laugh every day. Not every day goes well or is full of happy moments. That’s why it’s especially important to give yourself a break and the opportunity (and the permission) to smile and laugh. Watch a funny movie, listen to and tell a few jokes, have a drink with your friends, play with young children – it’s easy to squeeze a few of these in your daily life.

 

If you’re looking for a few more ideas to increase your positive thoughts and see the glass half-full, I recommend this great short book called The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People: What Scientists Have Learned and How You Can Use It by David Niven. What positive thoughts to do you tell yourself most often? What keeps you motivated every day?

Teamwork pays off ~ Troy Nunez

"No one can whistle a symphony. It takes an orchestra to play it.” - H.E. Luccock

 

It doesn’t matter how well we play our instrument, when together we can make such beautiful music. At Travel To Go, we believe teamwork is what makes our business so successful. We know we wouldn’t be able to continue our amazing growth without the help of all our employees. So in return, we make sure we empower them to contribute their best on a daily basis. One way we’ve achieved that is by emphasizing collaboration among teams of travel specialists. We’ve moved our desks and chairs around in the office to create our own “mini-companies”, each made up of agents from a specific travel service category (e.g. tours, condos, cruises, sky travel, etc.). This way, every agent has something valuable to offer our travel club members when they call us. Let me give you a couple examples of how this new system works.

 

Let’s say Mr. Justin Case calls and is considering driving to Sioux Falls from his home many hours away. The agent who picks up his call suggests that because of the low airfares to the upper Midwest right now, he bets Mr. Case could save quite a lot of money and time by flying instead. So he leans back, quickly consults with his fellow agent who specializes in air travel, and passes the call right over.

 

How about Mrs. Lotta Fun, who is planning a family trip to San Diego with her husband and two kids? She doesn’t want to miss out on any of the local attractions and family entertainment. The initial agent who handled her luxury vacation condominium reservation can now connect her to the team’s tour expert for some advice. Her tour specialist recommends Mrs. Fun to purchase a Go San Diego Card, which offers her family huge discounts on 45 museums and attractions in San Diego, including LEGOLAND®, SeaWorld, and the San Diego Zoo.

 

You see, not a day passes by at Travel To Go when we don’t think of how to better serve our travel club members. We’d love to hear your experience with our 5-Star service and encourage you sharing it on the Travel To Go Facebook page. Tell us what we’ve done well and how we could do even better.